


Relationship Material

by nirejseki



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Coming Out, Len is very good at many things, M/M, Pining, Wooing, this is not one of them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-08
Updated: 2016-12-08
Packaged: 2018-09-07 08:42:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8791060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/pseuds/nirejseki
Summary: Leonard Snart doesn't think he's relationship material. He's never going to settle down with a nice girl. Then someone points out that it's perfectly possible to settle down with a nice boy instead, and suddenly Len realizes that all his problems are solved....once he convinces Mick that it's a good idea, anyway.





	

Len never really thinks about things like relationships. Sure, he knows about them – he sees people around him falling in love, shacking up, that sort of thing – but he just doesn’t think it’s for him. He just isn’t relationship material.

He has a pretty face, to be sure; he can score just about any girl he wants, if he puts in the effort into pretending to have a more charming personality than he actually does. Mick teases him up and down about it, pretending to be jealous of how effective Len’s flirting was. Personally, Len doesn’t see the big deal. Flirting consists about 90% of just listening to his mark and showing interest in what she had to say, respecting her thoughts and accommodating her views, providing just enough difference to make for a spirited argument that he can gracefully yield – spinning her comments back out to her, same as any other type of con.

But – Mick’s stupid comments aside – there’s no girl that really catches his interest, not really. Hell, he’s barely interested in sleeping with them beyond the immediate pleasure of it; he’d much rather go home and catch the game with Mick. Sure, if Mick’s scored his own home run, Len’s not going to step on his toes or anything; he can find his own hotel room. He doesn't like going home alone if Mick's not there. 

But if he had to _pick_ , then, well, yeah, he’d much rather hang out with Mick. He knows it's a bit weird, being more interested in spending time shooting the breeze with your partner than making time with a hot chick, but there it is. Mick doesn’t mind if he makes terrible puns, or if he sometimes shuts down and doesn’t feel like talking, or if he feels like talking without end. Mick doesn’t pressure him to do anything he doesn’t feel like – except maybe eat properly, but, in fairness, Mick’s probably right about that one. 

Besides, with Mick, there’s no fear that he’ll lose his temper into the bottom of a bottle one day and wake up to find himself his father. Even if he did end up giving in to his blood, Mick wouldn’t put up with that shit for one minute, and they both know that Mick could kick his ass from here to Sunday. 

Which makes it all the more frustrating that Mick’s gone off with one of his usual girls tonight. Ruby’s a prostitute, thank god; if Mick had started making noises about getting a _girlfriend_ , Len would’ve had to think seriously about intervening. Their life’s no life for girlfriends. Look at all those Family men Len’s robbed because they were at their mistresses’ houses and they couldn’t accuse Len without giving up the truth. Look at all those once-great thieves that ended up having to give up the biz because their wife got too worried about the risks they were taking.

Mick has his hands full up already with Len and Lisa. There’s definitely no room for a girlfriend, not for either of them.

“Heeeeey, Lenny!”

Oh, great. Just what Len needs. A drunk cannibal.

“Hi, Charlie,” he says politely.

Len’s least favorite juvie acquaintance weaves unsteadily in Len’s direction before dropping himself into the seat next to Len. “How’s it going?” he says, glancing around, then brightening. “You alone?”

“Mick’s upstairs,” Len says tartly. 

Charlie deflates a little. “You going home with anyone?”

“I was planning on waiting for him, actually.”

Charlie throws an arm over Len’s shoulder. Len hates it when people do that. “Awww, Lenny, you shouldn’t let him treat you like that. You should come home with me! We could have fun.”

“I don’t think you and I have the same definition of fun,” Len says, amused despite himself. “And what do you mean, I shouldn’t let him treat me like that?”

“It wouldn’t be all bad,” Charlie says, his eyes a little dreamy as he sways back and forth on his bar stool at a somewhat alarming rate. “I could treat you good. Not like Mick. I’d make sure you were nice and happy. Nice, fat, and happy…”

“You’ve learned how to slow-braise,” Len translates. 

“Hey, yeah! That’s right. I took, like, a cooking seminar,” Charlie says, beaming. “How’d you know?”

“I guessed,” Len says dryly. 

“You’re so smart, Lenny,” Charlie says. “S’why I don’t understand why you let Mick treat you like that. If you were my boyfriend, I wouldn’t ditch you for some hookers. I’d treasure every last part of you, bone to gristle.”

“That’s incredibly reassuring,” Len replies, rolling his eyes. “By which I mean disturbing as always. Also, Mick ain’t my boyfriend. For one thing, I’m not sure you’ve noticed – especially when you’re this hammered – but I ain’t a girl.”

“Of course not,” Charlie says. “You’re – what’s it called. Queer.”

“I ain’t queer,” Len says immediately, because he’s heard the term tossed around in prison before and it’s not a compliment. “I look like a sissy to you?”

Charlie rolls his eyes. “Not all queers are sissies, Lenny,” he says. “That’s old news. You ever been to the place down on Fourth? That’s where the big ones go. Nice, big, muscular ones.”

Len’s going to have to check out the place on Fourth that Charlie’s referring to, if only to explain the whole “Charlie” thing to them. If someone’s been stupid enough to go home with Charlie, they ought to at least get warned on the down-low about his occasional cannibalistic tendencies. Really, as long as you’re very firm with your boundaries with him and don’t let him get behind you – or near his kitchen – you should be fine. Charlie’s mostly harmless. Mostly.

But…

“I’ve always thought that ‘queer’ _meant_ sissy,” Len says suspiciously. “Where’d you hear that it ain’t?”

Charlie pats him on the shoulder. “Lenny, a queer’s just a guy that wants to fuck another guy the way most guys want to fuck girls,” he says. “You know, settle down and all that. The details don’t matter.”

“Guys don’t settle down together.”

“Sure they do! My next door neighbors are queer; they’ve been shacked up for something like ten years.” Charlie leans over close to Lenny, his breath stinking with alcohol. “I would’ve invited them over, if y’know what I mean, but they gave me some sugar when I first moved in. Would you believe it? I ran out of sugar! It was still in the box. And they were so nice. So I decided I’m not gonna eat ‘em. And they’ve been very nice ever since.”

“That’s…nice of you,” Len says unconvincingly. Well, at least he wasn’t going to eat them. “Ten years? Two guys?”

“Yup. I thought like you did, but they gave me a whole lecture about it. And a pamphlet. I like pamphlets. Such nice people.”

“Charlie, I think you’re drunk,” Len says. “Stop leaning on me.”

“I’m not – huh, I am! When’d that happen?”

“Around the same time you started sniffing me,” Len says. “Time to go home, Charlie. I’ll get you a cab.”

And a warning label.

By the time Len finishes with that, Mick’s come back down and Len has to listen to the whole “I don’t like that Charlie guy, he’s serious trouble!” rant, which is still better than sitting alone at the bar because he doesn’t feel like putting in the effort to pull a nice girl. Then they go home and catch the last half of the game, just like Len would’ve wanted anyway. 

He has trouble falling asleep that night, though; he just keeps staring at the ceiling.

The thing about Charlie is, he might be a crazy cannibal, but he’s rarely _wrong_ about things; not like Len, who sometimes misses things because he doesn’t know enough to learn about them and everyone thinks they’re obvious. Len spent half his life thinking that “peach” was a crayon color rather than a fruit. 

Next evening, he makes his excuses to Mick – “I found a new place that Charlie hangs out; I wanna go warn them.” “You do that. Jesus Christ, that fucking guy...” – and goes down to Fourth Avenue. 

He checks a handful of bars before finally finding the one. But – it’s definitely the one. There are lots of guys there, and a good number of ‘em are making out, too. That part’s not so shocking – Len’s a jailbird; guys do guys all the time when there’s no other option – but some of ‘em look…well, like Charlie said. Settled down. And they definitely don’t look like sissies.

Len must’ve made another definitional mistake like the thing with the peaches. Fucking prison education.

“You want something or you just here to gawk?” someone says right behind him. The guy’s big – bigger than Mick, which is saying something – and he’s glaring, too, his muscles flexing under his shirt in a way that speaks of imminent ejection through a window. 

Len opens his mouth to say something charming and innocuous and ends up blurting out, “How do I convince my best friend to settle down with me?” instead, which he hadn’t even been _aware_ he was thinking.

The fierce look on the man’s face immediately fades. “Oh, boy,” he says. “You’re new, ain’t you?”

Len nods, a little shamefacedly.

“Your best friend, is he…?”

“I don’t know,” Len says. “He likes girls. But he comes home with me.”

“Christ,” the man says. “Okay. This calls for a drink. And Gary.”

Gary turned out to be the bartender and bar owner, a short black man with a trimmed gray beard, and a sympathetic way about him. He’s apparently the bar’s specialist on rookies. 

“We’ve all been there,” he tells Len. “Crushing on a straight friend. It never goes anywhere. Well, very rarely outside of porn, anyway.”

“I didn’t even realize it was an _option_ ,” Len says miserably. “I like girls too, you know? Just…you know…not as much as I like him.”

“You’re probably bisexual,” Gary tells him. “Or pansexual, maybe; it’s a new term they’re using. I don’t really keep up.”

“I don’t really care,” Len says. “I’m not really in the market. Mick’s good enough for me.”

“You understand he might not feel the same way,” Gary points out. “And bringing it up is…not necessarily wise. Some people can become quite violent.”

“Isn’t there some way to figure it out in advance?”

Gary shrugs. “You look at little clues and hope for the best, but in the end there’s no real way to be sure besides asking.”

“Great.”

“Has your friend ever demonstrated any, uh, interest in other men before?”

“Well,” Len says doubtfully. “I mean, we’ve fucked a few times –”

Gary’s eyebrows shoot up.

“In prison,” Len clarifies. “Doesn’t count.”

“Ah,” Gary says faintly, eyes slightly distant, almost dreamy. “Yes. I see. Are you sure you aren’t interested in trying your luck around the bar? There’s quite a few people who would be interested.”

“Nah,” Len says. “Just Mick. So how do I convince him?”

“Have you considered that he might break off your friendship over this?”

“No way,” Len says firmly. “He’d tell me he’s not interested and we’d move on. We’re _partners_. You don’t give that up over something dumb.”

“Plenty of partnerships have broken up over less.”

“Not ours. Now, give me tips. How do I check to see if he might be willing to go for it?”

“Okay,” Gary says. “Let’s brainstorm some ideas…”

By the end of it, half the bar’s sitting in and tossing in ideas, and Len does manage to get out his explanation about Charlie – a lot of people nod knowingly, with a couple of “no, he’s right, if you lay out very clearly that you’re not interested in getting eaten tonight he’ll be a bit disappointed but not, like, super angry or anything” thrown in, so _hah_ , Mick! – so all in all it’s a pretty good evening.

He even makes it back in time to convince Mick that they ought to stay in, a stratagem he accomplishes by saying, “I’m hungry. Could you make that thing from a few weeks back that I liked again?” 

“The short ribs?” Mick says doubtfully. “Those take three hours, and it’s already late.”

Len shrugs. “You don’t have to. We can go out –”

“No, no! I’ll make ‘em. No problem. Glad you liked ‘em. Can you run down to grab some vegetables?”

“There weren’t vegetables in that,” Len says suspiciously.

“They add bulk to the sauce,” Mick says soothingly. “You can barely taste them. Just go grab some onions, okay?”

Triumphantly, Len obtains the onions, then flees to the main room before he gets enlisted to chop them. 

He starts flipping through the channels. 

“Turner Classic Movies?”

“What’re they playing?”

“Uh…West Side Story.”

“ _No_.”

“Okay, okay. Yeesh. Uh – there’s a Doctor Who marathon –”

“Not for love or money.”

“There’s the Star Trek –”

“Don’t finish that sentence.”

“…the old Jekyll and Hyde from the 30s?”

Mick contemplates this. “Monster movie marathon?” he says hopefully. “You know if they’re doing Dracula or Frankenstein?”

Len digs up the TV Guide. “Yeah, you’re in luck. Jekyll and Hyde’s just starting, then you’ve got the Mummy, and looks like Drac’s up next after that,” he reports. 

“Great,” Mick says. “Let me sear the meat and put it on the stove to simmer, and I’ll be in to watch. Food should be ready by the time Dracula comes up.”

Len smiles. 

Unfortunately, he already tends to lounge all over Mick, so sitting particularly close doesn’t get much of a reaction, even when he throws a casual arm over Mick’s shoulders. 

All it gets him is a crick in the neck when he wakes up the next day, having fallen asleep with his head on Mick’s lap as Mick snores, head lolled back on the couch.

Clearly he’s going to have to try harder.

Another suggestion had been to try to set up more events that Mick likes and invite him to go to them, but unfortunately Len’s already mostly maxed out on that. He’d already invited Mick to the demolition show next month (it was in town and he always gets them tickets!), the rickety old place down on Elm won’t be ready for fire-blasting until the month after that, and he doesn’t have any current heists that need firepower.

He ends up blurting out something stupid about going to the junkyard to light some stuff on fire, which of course Mick agrees to, but all it gets him is a cold ass from sitting and watching Mick commune with the flames all night long. Mick’s not even grateful about it, either. 

Taking him out to a nice dinner doesn’t work, either, since Mick ends up taking three bites, realizes he knows the chef, and spends the rest of the dinner chatting with the guy, who’d apparently also started his career in the same dump that Mick’d worked at as a short-order cook, except he’d gone off to culinary school and ended up in this fancy place.

Asking Mick point-blank if he wanted to stay in instead of go out with girls only works the first few times, because eventually Mick starts asking if Len’s feeling down again – meaning depressed – and that’s so totally off-base that Len ends up dragging him out to the bar _himself_. Which ends up with Mick going home with _both_ Jasmine and Lily, and on Len’s dime, too, because he opened his big mouth and offered. 

Fuck. Len’s totally hopeless.

At this rate, he’d be better off taking _Charlie_ up on his offer.

“Do you think we ought to launder some of our next take and buy something a little more long-term than this place?" Len asks casually the next morning while Mick pokes at the waffles Len made for him with a dubious expression. They're only mostly burnt, jeez. 

"Why?" Mick asks. "We both prefer industrial spaces anyway: less cramped, more fireproof."

"Well, we'd own it; doesn’t mean it has to be a house. Could be a warehouse."

"Don't you already own a handful of warehouses?" 

"Well, yeah," Len admits. He always liked the idea of owning real estate. It tickled his funny bone. 

"So why not use one of those?"

"Thought you might like to help pick it out, s'all."

"Nah," Mick says. "I trust you. Just remember to pick somewhere fireproof and low to the ground, with high ceilings. I'd be pissed if you died of smoke inhalation just 'cause you decided to be prissy all of a sudden."

Len rolls up the newspaper and smacks Mick with it. The waffles are lost in the ensuing scuffle, but Mick seems cheerful enough anyway.

Len's attempt to buy Mick something complex and mechanical for him to take apart doesn't go much better, mostly because Mick thinks the gift is awesome but he has to finish the four projects he's already working on first, so he ends up putting it aside. 

Len sulks a little. He's clearly not good at the gift-giving portion of the courting process.

This is going to take more planning. 

The next morning, however, Mick corners Len. "Lenny," he says. "We need to talk."

"What about?" Len says, biting his lip in concentration. How the fuck does Mick do that elegant pancake flipping thing? Len just ends up scraping it into a triangle-like pile. Maybe if he tries to flatten it with the spatula...

"Lenny. You've got something to say, just say it."

Len sighs. He should've know being subtle wouldn't work. He turns to look at Mick. "You gotta not take this personally," he warns.

Mick crosses his arms. "I won't."

Len probably should have thought out this conversation a bit better. How to explain his thought process? Go through the whole thing? Skim over the details? Try to make it about their partnership?

"I'd like to get hitched."

Len needs to work on controlling his mouth around Mick.

Mick blinks. "Hitched? As in, married?"

"Yeah," Len says. In for a penny, in for a pound. "Not that foreswearing all others stuff, I'm not going to get in your way or anything, but, you know. The rest of it. The bit where you say you like me better than anyone else for the rest of your life. Because apparently guys can do that sort of thing. Well, maybe not legally; I don't know, I didn't check or anything. So. Uh. What do you say?"

"Your pancakes are on fire."

"Shit!" Len exclaims, spinning back to try to douse the now-flaming pieces of rock carmelizing onto his frying pan. 

Mick ends up dousing it for him. "How about we agree to leave the cooking to me in the vows?" he says, shaking his head.

"What vows?" Len asks. Mick gives him a look. "Oh! You - you're saying yes?"

"Sure," Mick says. "We're already partners, aren't we?"

"No, not like that," Len says. "I meant more like - you know - when we're in prison -" Words failing him, he attempts to illustrate using gestures.

Mick blinks, then grins. "Oh, hell, Lenny, I only go with the girls on the regular 'cause I thought you wouldn't be into it. Didn't you know that?"

"No, I didn't! You never said!"

"Well, there is one thing I _do_ want to say, though."

"Sure," Len says cautiously. 

"Before we agree on marriage, we ought to make sure we're compatible," Mick says. "In bed, I mean. Outside of prison."

"Sure," Len says. "How exactly were you thinking -"

The next day Len strolls into the bar on Fourth, because he virtuously believes in bragging as much as humanly possible. 

"You're smiling," Gary observes. "It went well."

"I think I may have done a terrible thing," Len says. "I've deprived the world of someone who fucks like a god."

Gary laughs. "Well done!" he says warmly. 

"He's going to meet me here, actually," Len says. "I figured we may as well. Besides, I need to show him off."

"No offense, Len, but I'm pretty sure you're the one being shown off," Gary says. "After you left last week, half the club decided to form a fan club. It's going to be pretty difficult to compare.”

“I think I’ll do okay,” Len says with a chuckle. 

“Speaking of showing off,” Gary murmurs. “Would you look at _that_ sweet piece that just walked through the door? Haven’t seen him around before, and he’s _just_ up my alley."

Len twists to look. "Oh," he says. "That's Mick."

"Wait, _that's_ Mick? _Your_ Mick?" Gary says. "I take it back: you're right, taking that off the market is a crime. What's your view on sharing?"

"That everyone's welcome to watch in jealousy," Len says happily. He's not adverse to finding a third one day, maybe someone cute who'd be good for the long-term given how long it takes Len to get interested in someone, but right now he's firmly in the honeymoon phase. "Ask me again in a few months; maybe I'll give you a better answer."

“Rookie’s luck,” Gary grumbles. “I should’ve known.”

**Author's Note:**

> Possibly set in the past of my Unexpected Development verse, but written separately.


End file.
